This weeks update ...

Jade caught a cold this past week, actually since she started Kindergarten just about every week she comes home with some kind of sniffles, thank God she is such a healthy child and eats so well so everything she gets over fast and nothing hits her that hard but this past one ... well she is almost over but she is still coughing, poor thing. I guess the early cold mornings don't help either but on Friday morning when really I feel as a mom she should have stayed home although she thought she was ok, they had their mile run at school and Jade would rather have died than missed that, being Friday, I figured what the heck and sent her. It was freezing that morning so because I had to work later the morning and wasn't feeling too great myself after a bad night, I let Dave go stand in the cold to cheer her on :-) He said she did fine, I told her she could run on one condition that she didn't try to win, that she took it easy, you see there is another run at the end of the year where they are timed again so she thought she had to run her fastest ... I told her next time she can run as fast as she could but this time coz she was sick she needed to take it easy. Dave said she pretty much ran in the middle of the class so she still did well, as athletic as she is with her gymnastics, she really isn't a runner so I didn't expect her to win anyway :-) That being said, she tries so hard, I know she would have done a lot better had she felt more herself.

Anyway here is a picture of her class before the run, you can tell that most of them ran with jackets on it was so cold.



On Sunday we went out to the house to get an update, most of you probably are getting tired of these updates but we are trying to show our folks the stages of how a house gets built her so please just hang in there, it will eventually be built and you won't have to hear too much more about it :-)

Here you can see that they have started putting the siding on the front of the house but remember I mentioned before that the color you are seeing is not the color that you will see in the end, it still needs to be painted, that being said, I kinds like it this light but it's going darker ... they have also started putting the shutters on too, I think one more week and we will need a key to get in every week as the garage doors will be on which is our main entry right now into the house.



This is the back of the house, I am sure shortly they will start our deck, you can see that the one side of the house closest to the camera is all done being sided too but the other side hadn't been done yet.



These two are just of the inside, it's a lot cleaner looking than it was last week but here was so much dust going on because they were actually working on the house when we stopped by that I didn't even go in, Dave just took a quick pic or two. Yeah it was Sunday, can you tell they are eager to get it done. They say it will be done before Christmas but we have no intentions of starting to move in till mid January, so ... guys since we won't be making a trip out to SA anytime soon, we will have lots of space for you, so hint, hint, time for a trip across the ocean, come visit !!!





Last but not least, I want to tell you about a proud parent moment, on Sunday evening at church Jade was asked by the Monsignor to help take up a basket when they took up the offertory, you see during the mass she attends a kids class in one of the back classes and then when the Father is done with the Homily, they come in and those chosen walk down the center of the church with the rest of the group taking the offertory and rest of the goodies for communion, only Jade was right in the front and she did so well, she had to walk up on the 'stage' as she calls it, the alter to put the basket up there and then come down for a blessing. She was so cute and so proud, she ran back to us with a big smirk on her face and mom of course was almost in tears.

Oh oh ... I said last thing but I wanted to mention one more thing, today I took Jade to have her eyes tested, my gut feel was that there was nothing wrong with her, I mean she is my child that can find a needle in a haystack but her pediatrician suggested it so better safe than sorry. Well they did a bunch of tests before even seeing the doctor then they dilated her eyes for further testing, not ever having had that happen to me before, I had no idea what she was going to experience and from what I understand, it could be a totally scary experience and she was as usual such a trooper. She had to wait 30 mins before seeing the doctor, in that time her site got worse and worse and she kept on telling me how much less she could see, a scary experience for me actually but she was totally ok and handled everything so well. Bottom line is thank God all is well and she passed all the tests perfectly, hopefully she has my eyes and not her dads, the doctor says obviously it is no guarantee but it looks like she is going to be fine and won't have eye issues anytime in the near future ... Thank God !!!

Jade is such a brave child, as long as you tell her what she is going to go through, no matter how uncomfortable things are, she just deals with it, she is way braver than I am, that I know for sure, poor thing, I am so proud of her !!!

That's it for now, Halloween on Friday so I am sure there will be lots of pics then.